The old man sank back into his seat, full of doubts and fears.
He was dozing a little when the train pulled into Joigny soon after one o'clock. It stood there in the station in the hot sunlight, interminably. Presently a man came down the corridor.
'Descendez, monsieur,' he said. 'This train goes no farther.'
Howard stared up at him dumbfounded. 'But - this is the Paris train?'
'It is necessary to change here. One must descend.'
'When will the next train leave for Paris?'
'I do not know, monsieur. That is a military affair.' He got the children into their coats, gathered his things together, and presently was on the platform, burdened with his luggage, with the three children trailing after him. He went straight to the station-master's office. There was an officer there, a capitaine des transports. The old man asked a few straight questions, and got straight answers.
'There will be no more trains for Paris, monsieur. None at all. I cannot tell you why, but no more trains will run north from Joigny.'
There was a finality in his tone that brooked no argument. The old man said: 'I am travelling to St Malo, for England, with these children. How would you advise me to get there?'
The young officer stared at him. 'St Malo? That is not the easiest journey, now, monsieur.' He thought for a moment. 'There would be trains from Chartres... And in one hour, at half-past two, there is an autobus for Montargis... You must go by Montargis, monsieur. By the autobus to Montargis, then to Pithiviers, from Pithiviers to Angerville, and from Angerville to Chartres. From Chartres you will be able to go by train to St Malo.'
He turned to an angry Frenchwoman behind Howard, and the old man was elbowed out of the way. He retired on to the platform, striving to remember the names of the places that he had just heard. Then he thought of his little Baedeker and got it out, and traced the recommended course across country to Chartres. It skirted round Paris, sixty miles farther west. So long as there were buses one could get to Chartres that way, but Heaven alone knew how long it would take.
He knew the ropes where French country autobuses were concerned. He went and found the bus out in the station yard, and sat in it with the children. If he had been ten minutes later he would not have found a seat.
Worried and distracted by the chatter of the children, he tried to plan his course. To go on to Montargis seemed the only thing to do, but was he wise to do it? Would it not be better to try and travel back to Dijon? The route that he had been given through Montargis to Chartres was quite a sensible one according to his Baedeker; it lay along ar good main road for the whole of the hundred miles or so to Chartres. This bus would give him a good lift of thirty-five or forty miles on the way, so that by the time he left it he would be within sixty miles of Chartres and the railway to St Malo; provided he could get a bus to carry him that sixty miles he would be quite all right. If all went well he would reach Chartres that night, and St Malo the next morning; then the cross-channel boat and he would be home in England.
It seemed all right, but was it really wise? He could get back to Dijon, possibly, though even that did not seem very certain. But if he got back there, what then? With the Germans driving forward into France from the north,, and the Italians coming up from the south, Dijon seemed to be between two fires. He could not stay indefinitely in Dijon. It was better, surely, to take courage and go forward in the bus, by north and west in the direction of the Channel and home.
The bus became filled with a hot, sweating crowd of French country people. All were agitated and upset, all bore enormous packages with them, all were heading to the west. Howard took Sheila on his knee to make more room and squeezed Ronnie standing up between his legs. Rose pressed up against him, and an enormous woman with a very small infant in her arms shared the seat with them. From the conversation of the people in the bus Howard learned that the Germans were still pouring on, but that Paris would be defended to the last. Nobody knew how far the Germans had advanced, how near to Joigny they might be. It was wise to move, to go and stay with relations farther to the west.
One man said: 'The Chamber has left Paris. It is now at Tours.' Somebody else said that that rumour was not true, and a desultory argument began. Nobody seemed to take much interest in the Chamber; Paris and the life of cities meant very little to these peasants and near-peasants.
It was suffocatingly hot in the bus. The two English children stood it better than Howard could have expected; la petite Rose seemed to be more affected than they were. Howard, looking down, saw that she had gone very white. He bent towards her.
'Are you tired?' he said kindly. She shook her head mutely. He turned and struggled with the window at his side; presently he succeeded in opening it a little and letting in a current of warm, fresh air.
Presently the driver climbed into his seat, and the grossly overloaded vehicle lumbered from the square.
The movement brought a little more air into the bus.
They left the town after a couple of stops, carrying an additional load of people on the roof. They started out along the long straight roads of France, dusty and in poor repair. The dust swirled round the heavy vehicle; it drove in at the open window, powdering them all. Ronnie, standing between the old man's legs, clung to the window, avid for all that he could see; Howard turned Sheila on his lap with difficulty, so that she could see out too.
Beside him, presently, Rose made a little wailing cry. Howard looked down, and saw her face white with a light greenish hue; before he could do anything to help her she had vomited on the floor.
For a moment he was startled and disgusted. Then patience came back to him; children couldn't help that sort of thing. She was coughing and weeping; he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped her face and comforted her.
'Pauvre petite chou,' he said awkwardly. 'You will be better now. It is the heat.'
With some struggling he moved Sheila over and lifted Rose up on his knee, so that she could see out and have more air. She was still crying bitterly; he wiped her eyes and talked to her as gently as he could. The broad woman by him smiled serenely, quite unmoved by the disaster.
'It is the rocking,' she said in soft Midland French, 'like the sea. Always I have been sick when, as a little girl, I have travelled. Always, always. In the train and in the bus, always, quite the same.' She bent down. 'Sois tranquille, ma petite,' she said. 'It is nothing, that.'
Rose glanced up at her, and stopped crying. Howard chose the cleanest corner of his handkerchief and wiped her eyes. Thereafter she sat very quiet and subdued on his knee, watching the slowly moving scene outside the window.
'I'm never sick in motor-cars,' said Ronnie proudly in English. The woman looked at them with new curiosity; hitherto they had spoken in French.
The road was full of traffic, all heading to the west. Old battered motor-cars, lorries, mule carts, donkey-carts, all were loaded to disintegration point with people making for Montargis. These wound in and out among the crowds of people pushing hand-carts, perambulators, wheelbarrows even, all loaded with their goods. It was incredible to Howard; it seemed as though the whole countryside were in flight before the armies. The women working in the fields looked up from time to time in pauses of their work to stare at the strange cavalcade on the highway. Then they bent again to the harvest of their roots; the work in hand was more important than the strange tides that flowed on the road.
Halfway to Montargis the bus heeled slowly to the near side. The driver wrestled with the steering; a clattering bump, rhythmic, came from the near back wheel. The vehicle drew slowly to a stop beside the road.
The driver got down from his seat to have a look. Then he walked slowly back to the entrance to the bus. 'Un pneu,' he said succinctly, 'il faut descende - tout le monde. We must change the wheel.'
Howard got down with relief. They had been sitting in the bus for nearly two hours, of which an hour had been on the road. The children were hot and tired and fretful; a change would obviously be a good thing. He took them one by one behind a little bush in decent manner; a proceeding which did not escape the little crowd of passengers collected by the bus. They nudged each other. 'C'est un anglais...'
The driver, helped by a couple of passengers, wrestled to jack up the bus and get the flat wheel off. Howard watched them working for a little time; then it occurred to him that this was a good opportunity to give the children tea. He fetched his parcel of food from the rack, and took the children a few yards up the road from the crowd. He sat them down on the grass verge in the shade of a tree, and gave them sandwiches and milk.
